Comments

Comment by lawngnome

What does a death rune do anyways, and is this the only way to obtain one?

Comment by helmers

"This rune counts as a Blood, Unholy, or Frost Rune." It means that you will be able to use the rune for anything you want. Normally you are restricted to two runes per type (Blood, Unholy, or Frost), this will give you a 3rd.

This talent doesn't look like much on the surface but is very good for all specs, since for instance a full Blood specialized Death Knight would much rather have a Blood rune than a Frost rune.

Comment by hockeyhacker

"Ok, i knew when i asked if it was working and someone said it was i didn't really trust his opinion, his name was "iwiperaids".But i too also felt this talent wasn't working and i would have deathrune procs but wouldn't be able to use even instant talents that require just one frost or blood rune."

Well just by what you said it doesn't look like the talent was broken, what it looks like is yes they became a Death Rune, just Death runes haven't/hadn't been implemented to being a replacement to the 3 types of runes... probably because that isn't the highest priority yet into implementing correctly... plus when they impliment they probably want to make sure that death runes are only used if you have non of what the spell runes active already (IE if its a blood spell and if you have a blood rune making sure that the blood rune gets used before the death rune, but if all blood on CD then uses death instead)

BTW there is already glitchs in the live game that they know of that they havn't fixed yet such as a mages top rank "Fire shield" doesn't absorb any damage at all (yes I did notice this doing dailies on my mage and my ice barrier got eatten up and I started taking fire damage while my "Fire Shield" was still up), I ticketed it and the GM just said "yeah we know that fire shield does nothing and is broken, sorry for the inconvenience"

Comment by grapeman7

is this an everlasting buff or is it an activated CD, because on the tooltip it reads "3 min cooldown" but nobody has said anything about this

and i was wondering if i had a spec like this if i use a Death Strike or Obliterate with Death Runes instead of FU than would they reactivate as Death Runes again or return to their original Rune values?

Comment by Mercurial

Much like the other "Death Rune" talents, Unholy tree Reaping and Frost tree Blood of the North, there is no cooldown on this ability. That seems to just be some weird tooltip error.

Comment by 7598462153

As far as I've seen, this talent currently works as intended on live. Notice, however, the phrase "when they activate": you still have to wait ten seconds for the frost and unholy runes you used for Death Strike or Obliterate, which turn into death runes, to re-activate.

Comment by Argus9

This is particularly useful for adding in two additional Heart Strikes to your Blood DPS rotation, or allowing more versatility for use of other abilities.

Comment by NSX08

This talent totally owns. Seriosly. My first blood specc were without this, then i changed to unholy and later I changed back to blood with this talent. Its huge diffrent.

Yes, you get 4 or 5 blood runes cause of the deathrunes. Spam Heart Strike is so FTW.

Comment by FallenSin

if you build a DK with both Death mastery and Blood of the North from frost .. it would then be possible to have 6 death runes? with the idea of spaming obliterate and blood strike.

Comment by freemontenegrian

Can someone explain to me what death rune is what it does and what it is used for?

Comment by JD3K

This is explained in evry single comment b4 ur... Are u blind?omg, buy a brain or some glasses

Comment by bobgoatse

How long do the Death Runes stick around for?

Sometimes I've seen them stay after combat for 20-30 seconds and other times they are converted back right after.

Comment by omicon

The only reason I can see as to wanting a way to convert your runes to death runes is if you were maby unholy spec and wanted to use ss a bit more haveing this and reaping may allow you to get in a few extra ss.

Comment by Kanly

Can anyone tell me if death runes work towards the talent Blade Barrier? Does their CD still count as activating this talent?

Comment by TriniKrusader

Or if, conversely, having a Death Rune available makes Blade Barrier activate LESS? Since if a Death Rune does NOT count as a Blood Rune for Blade Barrier, it'll get used up when a Blood Rune could have been used, prevent the creation of a Blade Barrier after Death Strike or Obliterate and make this a bad talent for tanks.

Comment by Carighan

This was fixed in 3.0.8 I believe. Now, Blade Barrier merely checks whether the frontal 2 runes are on cooldown. Independant of whether they're currently Blood or Death runes.

Comment by aheroictragedy

Comment by dragunknight92

I have 3 points in Death Rune Mastery on my DK, which I understand to mean that both my Frost & UH runes should become Death Runes after I've used them.

Ok, so I'm in a fight, I use Icy Touch (1 Frost), followed by Death Strike(1 UH & 1 Frost), I look up at my Runes and I only see 1 or 2 of them turning purple, not 3! I have managed to have all 4 purple at the same time, but I had to kill like 5 mobs in a row without leaving combat.

I know its not just a visual error, because it is putting my other spells on CD!

I'm not sure if this is a glitch or it's intended way of working, but its &*!@ing my off!

Comment by Articon

This is because, of the two abilities you used, only Death Strike converts the used runes into Death Runes.So yes, you would only get two Death Runes in that instance. For this reason, it is best to use Icy Touch, as a means to maintain Frost Fever, on a Death Rune. The reason being, Frost Fever lasts 15 seconds, so, longer than the runic CD, but it also allows for a 'smooth' rotation of abilities.

Comment by Separa

As of 3.2, death runes created by this attack are now consumed in a more efficient order. If you have no regular runes available, the death runes will be consumed in order of what the rune was before it was converted. For an example, I'll abbreviate the rune types (B)lood, (F)rost, (U)nholy, and (D)eath.

A normal rune bar:-- BBFFUU

If you convert your F and U runes to Death runes, when the runes refresh your bar will look like this:-- BBDDDD

Now, if you hit Icy Touch it will use one of the first two runes, if you hit Plague Strike it will use one of the last two runes. Here is what you'd have after using those abilities:-- BBfDuDNote, the lowercase letters are runes that aren't available yet.

These changes make it much more difficult to burn both Unholy runes before your Frost runes, leading to a weird staggered rotation when they refresh.

Another glitch with them happens when you manage to get both of one type of rune as Death, and the other as its normal type. If you use both of those Death runes to cast Death Strike, instead of them both refreshing as Death one will fresh as normally, one will refresh as death, and one of the 'other' type of rune will refresh as death as well. Another example, where you somehow manage to set up both Frost runes as Death and your unholy runes are on cooldown:-- BBDDuuFiring off a Death Strike will result in this:-- BBdfdu

This is why Death Runes don't always behave as you'd expect them to.

Comment by Dicamillo

This talent is excellent for a deep blood death knight. Why? A normal rune bar would look like this:BBFFUU- Just like the above poster wrote. As a deep blood death knight your bread and butter attack would be Heart Strike, which consumes 1 (B)lood rune.If you have glyph of disease you only need 1 (B)lood rune to refresh your diseases.

BBfFuU- Like the above poster lowercase letters are runes on cooldown.

You follow-up with 2 Heart Strike, which consumes 2 (B)lood runes.

Your runebar looks like this now:

bbfFuU

You cast your Obliterate, which consumes 1 (F)rost rune and 1 (U)nholy rune but converts them into death runes once their cooldown is over.

Your runebar looks like this now:

bbffuu

To keep up your diseases you only have to cast pestilence, which refreshes them with Glyph of Disease. This costs 1 (B)lood rune. So you have the following to spend in attacks:

bBFFUU

The (B)lood rune should be spend with a Heart Strike. And the 2 (F)rost runes and 2 (U)nholy runes should be spend at 2 Obliterates. Once the 2 (F)rost runes and 2 (U)nholy runes become active again they are now death runes, which you may now spend at Heart Strike. At this time the (B)lood rune which you used on Heart Strike would also be active.

Your rune bar now looks like this:

bBDDDD-The first blood rune is on cooldown because you're spending it to refresh your diseases.

You can now spend your 1 (B)lood rune and 4 (D)eath runes on 5 Heart Strike.

Long story short:Once your diseases are up you spend 1 (B)lood on keeping the disease refreshed. The last (B)lood rune should always be spend at Heart Strike. You should always spend your (F)rost and (U)nholy runes at Obliterate and (D)eath runes at Heart Strike.

Comment by Redwood

The ability says there is a 3 min CD. Is it a mistake, does one need to activate the ability or is it a 3 min CD on the effect of the ability?

Comment by Cialbi

Comment by Chaoslux

As of 4.0, i hate this talent. I always wants to use my FU runes for Death Strike now, but it causes Death runes, and sometimes when i heart strike, it decides to take one of the death runes instead of my blood runes, which waste death strikes... And there's no way to not spec into it...

Comment by iamleejn

This is a useful little gem when you keep something in mind: Runic Empowerment restoring either 2 frost runes or 2 unholy runes doesn't help much with Death Strikes. Death Strike requires 1 frost and 1 unholy, however 2 death runes will work just fine. So as long as you don't mindlessly mash buttons, this can* let you put your Runic Empowerment procs into those Death Strikes.